


Kid Gloves

by lookninjas



Series: Children's Work [19]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Politics, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-08 09:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13455555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookninjas/pseuds/lookninjas
Summary: Ben Organa gets married on Inauguration Day, and no one is able to stop him.





	Kid Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "BEN AND POE GOT MARRIED??!!??!! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THAT AS WELL PLEASE AND THANK YOU. THEIR WHOLE EVERYTHING. THANK."
> 
> (What a good prompt.)
> 
> Also, title shamelessly stolen from Doomtree, because love and war is redundant.

Yes, Ben and Poe get married.

Ben and Poe get married on Inauguration Day.

When it gets mentioned on the nightly news – which it does, and much more broadly than anyone really expected – it’s mostly as a sort of coda to The Leia Organa Story.

The news loves The Leia Organa Story. The twists, the turns, the tragedy. Eighteen years after the defeat that cost her so much, Leia Organa finally wins her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, only for that brave heart of hers to give out before she could ever be sworn in. Leia Organa is a martyr. She is a cautionary tale. She is a thousand things that she never once actually was when she was alive – a saint, a victim, someone to be revered and pitied simultaneously. And the marriage, of course, is simply a piece of good news in a world full of bad, a loving oasis in a sea full of grief. Leia’s son, carrying out one final promise to his mother, honoring her memory in a lovely domestic scene.

It’s very nice. It’s also total bullshit.

Leia was _joking_ when she suggested Ben and Poe move their wedding up so she’d have a better excuse to skip the Inauguration than “I’m worried I’ll strangle the jackass with his tie.” Ben knew that; of course he knew. Leia never needed an excuse to say “no” to anything. But something in it caught him; he couldn’t let the idea go. He carried it with him through Thanksgiving dinner and out the other side, carried it to bed, was still carrying it when he woke up and found himself (not for the first time), hypnotized by the way Poe’s morning stubble felt against the side of his thumb, the scratch of it. Poe’s eyelashes and the tumble of his hair and how warm he was, curled up under the sheets, how solid he was, how real. Real and breathing and here in bed with Ben, and when Poe blinked awake and caught him staring – when he smiled and said, “Penny for ‘em,” there was nothing Ben could do but say,

“You know how Mom said we should move the wedding up?”

And Poe very nearly pointed out that Leia had been joking, but there was something in Ben’s face, a calm that Poe recognized. He looked at Ben, at that calm, and said, “Sure. If you want to, we can do that.”

And then, after a little more reflection, “You think we should find a bigger venue?”

Leia’s face, when they tell her, is indescribable, and absolutely priceless. When she recovers (which is quickly; she always has), she asks, “So are you sending Mike Pence an invitation?”

Ben considers it with a kind of unholy glee that tells Leia _exactly_ why he’s doing this, and she never questions it again.

Hux needs a more explicit approach, which Ben suspected from the start, so as soon as Hux gets his first “I’m just having a hard time seeing exactly _why_ –” Ben cuts him off.

“Because fuck them.”

Hux falls silent, blinking furiously, like he’s on the fritz. 

Ben says it again. “Fuck them. They haven’t won yet. I can still be out and proud and married to the man I love if that’s what I want to do, and I want to, so I’m going to. And they can’t stop me. Because they haven’t won yet. So fuck them. I’m getting married.”

Hux blinks a little more. “Well,” he manages, finally. “Fair enough. I suppose that still leaves me a little time to find a tux, anyway.”

No one else really questions it. Luke, in particular, seems almost like he was expecting it. Maybe he was.

It is out of character – Ben knows that. He is a private person who was only ever allowed to be private when he was pretending to be someone else, when he was Ben Keller, out in the middle of nowhere. The stage was smaller when he was young. It’s grown, now. #snokewasright is trending on twitter and he is expected to have an opinion on that. He is expected to present the worst five months of his life up for public dissection, to give them a guided tour of it. Point out the juiciest bits so they can be sliced open, carved up, shared around. And he does it. He does it in the hopes that someone will learn something from his mistakes, but the point is – He would be allowed to have this to himself, if he wanted. He could keep this close to the vest.

If he wanted.

But fuck them. If they want his pain, they can have his joy, too. If they want the worst of his life, he will present them with the best. If they want his shame, he will give them his pride, and if someone learns from that then that’s fantastic, but if they just choke on it –

If they choke on it, that’s okay, too. Let them choke.

He’s like Leia. He’s no one’s victim. He’s no one’s martyr. 

People will get that wrong, and he knows that, and he’s making his peace with that, as best he can.

But all the same, fuck them.

Ben Organa gets married on Inauguration Day, and no one is able to stop him.


End file.
